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Posted in Life in Central IL on February 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

11:45 at night and we are boiling maple sap into maple syrup!

Posted in Life in Central IL on February 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The fire has been going strong since 1 pm on Sunday. Saturday’s harvest from 25 taps was 16 five gallon buckets (also known as two full 35 gallon containers). It was a warm day and the sap was flowing. Today, it was colder and the harvest was less–only about 35 gallons. The fire is fed about every 30 minutes. We add sap as often as we see a rolling boil. Of the 90-120 gallons of raw sap collected, we are now adding today’s harvest to the large stainless steel rectangular tank that sits on top of a horizontal 55 gallon steel drum fire box. Approx. 36-42 gallons of raw sap makes 1 gallon of syrup. It is 12:30 am now…

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Posted in Life in Central IL on February 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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Posted in Life in Central IL on February 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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Chocolate-Date Sauce

Posted in Life in Central IL, tagged Chocolate, Medjool Dates, Recipe on February 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Recipe for chocolate-date sauce: 12 oz of fresh medjool dates, de-seeded, soaked for 30 minutes in enough water to cover the dates, blended until smooth, three heaping tablespoons of cocoa powder, blended until smooth. Makes about 2 cups or just over. We put the sauce in a clean 2 cup glass jar with a lid, a used glass nut butter jar works great!

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